Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace — Season 6

In this ‘What Happened Next?' episode of Born Without Trace, we revisit two foundlings as they build family ties and make more life-changing discoveries.

Thomas was left as a baby in the waiting room of Reading train station in 1965. Extraordinarily, the first birth relative the team finds for him is another foundling: Martina - left as a baby on the steps of a Dublin church. Apart from DNA, all they share at first are questions – however, their meeting soon leads to life-changing discoveries for them both.

‘Euston Baby' Rachel's adoptive mother always told her ‘you were like Paddington Bear, you were found at a train station', but the parallels end there as Rachel still bears physical scars from her time left alone in a battered carry cot in Euston Station's long-stay car park more than 50 years later. For most foundlings, the time and place they were left is all they know about their beginnings. Foundling Steve doesn't even know this – taken into care from an unlicensed foster home, he doesn't exist in any records before he was nine months old. 

Found in a shopping basket under a Birmingham hedge, Liz has since triumphed over every challenge life has thrown at her except for the puzzle of her true identity. Foundling Susanne was left in an East London phone box along with a heartbreaking note from her birth mother. For years she's been hoping for a close DNA match and, finally, she makes a joyful connection.